April 24, 2014
02:00 PM (EDT)

News Release Number: STScI-2014-16

Astronomical Forensics Uncover Planetary Disks in Hubble Archive

April 24, 2014: Nearly 2,000 planets have been confirmed to be orbiting other stars in
our galaxy. But the details of planet birth and formation are sparse. The
conventional wisdom, dating back to a hypothesis by philosopher
Immanuel Kant in the late 1700s, considered the
orbit of the planets in our solar system to be the skeleton of disks of dust
and gas that swirled around the newborn sun. The dust particles clumped
together to build planets from the ground up.

More than 200 years later the Hubble Space Telescope's exquisite resolution
and sensitivity have allowed astronomers to discover dusty disks around
young stars. These disks are believed to be fed by dust blasted off
newborn planets colliding with a clutter of other bodies in the system.
The disks only reflect light, and so are much fainter than their parent star.
The disks are warmed by the star, and so glow at infrared wavelengths as
well. Applying new image processing techniques, astronomers have been
able to tease out images of disks hidden away in Hubble infrared data
taken over a decade ago. This underscores the importance of archiving
astronomical observations for future astronomers. If at first you don't
find something wonderful and mysterious out there, try, try again.